


DNA

by Ashling



Category: The Far Pavilions - M. M. Kaye
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, I've always had a theory..., Is it polyamory or is it friendship? I don't know don't look at me, Some things you can't fix or change but being with people that love you does help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 22:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17775473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: "Seeing him toddling about the camp, you would have taken him to be Sita's own child, for Isobel had been a brown beauty, honey-skinned, black-haired, and grey-eyed, and her son had inherited her colouring."Ash has always wondered.





	DNA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quin/gifts).



> I have had this headcanon for _years_ and frankly I am thrilled that Quin gave me Modern AU as a chance to thrash it out. Thanks Quin! I've been looking for an excuse to write The Far Pavilions for a long while.

Ash stares at the paper in his hands like it's about to spontaneously combust. 50.1% South Asian, it says. Helpfully, it has a world map, plus India and the adjacent countries highlighted in orange, while Western Europe is highlighted in purple. Vaguely, some facts about the Mercator projection drift through his head. His mouth is very dry.

"It could be wrong," Wally says tentatively. 

They're arranged in a close trio on the rug, Ash cross-legged, Wally stretched out on his stomach, and Juli leaning back against the side of the sofa with her knees close to her chest. Juli says nothing, but that doesn't mean she's not present. She's just watching, dark eyes taking Ash in, her whole focus resting on him in a way he can nearly feel. He can see it out of the corner of his eye. He's afraid to look directly at her, because he doesn't know what those eyes hold, exactly: hope? Pity? Satisfaction? Worry? None of the possibilities are good.

Wally doesn't do well with silence, though. Ever. "23andMe has had bullshit results before," he says cautiously.

 _"Don't,"_ Ash says, and he surprises himself with how abrupt that sounds. He tries to amend his tone with little success, but he does manage to at least pace the words. "You don't have to..."

"Sorry," Wally says. "I'm sorry, that was out of line, it's not—"

Ash shakes his head, angry at himself, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. "It doesn't matter," he says, when what he wasn't to say is: _it shouldn't matter._

It really shouldn't matter. Hilary Pelham-Martyn was never any kind of father to him, unless you count money as a function of a father, in which case Hilary had been nominally adequate and nothing more. And though he appreciated the agony Isobel Pelham-Martyn had gone through to bring him into the world, she was no more his mother than anyone else; he didn't have a single memory of her, and he knew her by her first and last name in the way he knew of ancient queens by their full names. Sita had been his true mother. Ash knew that. Everybody knew that. 

Only now she might be his blood mother, too. Maybe. Or maybe Isobel had had an affair.

He's a bastard either way, in a world that barely cares anymore about whether or not anyone is a bastard, but he cares. He cares. It feels like Sita as his mother could be something good and real, and having a nameless father lost out there somewhere in India is simply a hole he couldn't fill, another story that will never reach its end.

He can't explain that out loud. So he turns to the facts. He runs through it like an army drill, ruthless and methodical.

"Half and half," he says. "It isn't likely that Sita and my father did it. I mean Sita and Hilary. Sita's sense of honor wouldn't allow it. And Akbar Khan would never have allowed Hilary to force her into anything. I don't see any other white men she could have been seeing." Only it was so long ago, and he knows he views Sita through a child's eyes always, taller than him by far, omniscient, protective, benevolent. Maybe. Does anyone ever really know their parents?

"I can't think of any," Wally says loyally, though of course he never met any of these people. Juli still says nothing.

"Isobel could have had an affair," says Ash. "Easily. If a man doesn't care about his children, he's not likely to be much more attentive to his wife. I remember Akbar, and I remember Sita, and I remember everyone from the court, but I don't remember my father. Not really. I remember he liked to smoke sometimes, and I remember once when he let me look at one of his big botanical books, but that's all. If he had any interest in me, I would remember more of him."

"You were small," Wally says. "Children don't remember very much."

"Children feel," says Ash. "Akbar wanted me to be a Muslim, I remember that much. I can still remember fragments of the Khutpa. And Sita, Sita had me go watch Daya Ram doing pujah to Shiva. But Hilary never so much as showed me a Bible."

"Maybe he didn't have one," says Wally. "Maybe he was an athiest."

"He probably was," says Ash. "Faith takes effort." Hearing himself, he swallows hard. The bitterness in his voice is palpable, and he wants to explain, but he can't. Bitterness is better than longing. 

This is the point at which Wally would usually pipe up to fill the silence, but Juli is stopping him now with her slim fingers on his shoulder.

"I don't want to belong to Hilary, or Isobel," Ash says, after a while. "I don't want forty-nine point nine percent. None of it. Boarding school, the army. I never wanted it. I didn't ask for it. One thing is easy. It's good, it's healthy. Just Sita, just Akbar."

"Just India," Juli says softly.

"Or just England," Ash says, trying to put some kind of twist on it and failing utterly. "I could be just English if they'd tried to do it that way. If they had brought me back in time. I could have settled. Learned to like the food. All of that."

"Become a polo star," says Juli. Wally makes an uncertain noise, like he thinks maybe he should laugh, maybe he really shouldn't.

Ash looks up sharply. But she isn't laughing at him. 

"We are who we are," she says. "Dreaming otherwise is sometimes not the right choice."

"I could have stayed," Ash says. "That's what's on this." He shakes the thick piece of paper, and it makes an odd sound, rippling in the air. "This says I didn't have to leave. I had someone in India, I had people. None of this had to fucking happen."

"You would be somebody else if you never left," says Juli.

"Maybe I want to be somebody else."

"I don't want you to be anybody else. And you wouldn't have Wally."

They both turn to look at Wally, who tries to make a smile at the attention. "'s all right," he says. "I get it. I'd die for England in a heartbeat, but..." And now Wally makes the most generous political concession that he's ever made, and the last time he'll ever make it. Though Wally was always too smart to let his patriotism blindfold him entirely. "I see how she's sometimes not the best."

"Sometimes," says Juli.

"To an outsider, you mean," says Ash.

"I don't know what to say," says Wally, wretchedly.

Ash gestures meaninglessly with one hand. "You don't have to say anything."

They settle a little into the silence, until Juli breaks it. She breaks it gently.

"We are what you have now," she says. She says it very quietly, very deliberately. "Sita watches you, but she can't touch you. She loves you, but." Juli reaches for him with her other hand, her left hand, the one that's not on Wally's shoulder. Ash freezes, but doesn't move away, and presently her fingers are running gentle through the hair at his temple. "We are your family. And you have absolutely no blood from either of us. You don't need blood."

Ash closes his eyes. "I know," he says. "I know. I just get tired. George, and everything."

"I know," Juli says softly.

He finds her hand in the dark, interlaces their fingers. 

Wally clears his throat. "I think I'll—"

Ash opens his eyes, extends his other hand. 

Wally blinks and glances over at Juli, almost skittish. But Juli looks back placidly.

"Right," Wally mutters, and Ash nearly takes his hand back at that alone, but then Wally takes his hand too.

"Sofa?" Wally says, after a few minutes.

"Bony ass," Ash says, but fondly. The three of them rearrange. The faux-leather couch is so old that it dips in the middle, forces them to slide together. Not that Ash is complaining.


End file.
